Hacker News Reader

Comment by nickthemagicman | Hacker News Reader

Florida has the second highest per Capita number of old people in the country. California is one of the lowest at number 45. So while you're right...by not using per Capita numbers... you're presenting your data in a very disengenuous and truth distorting way. Its like saying India has more old people than Burbank. Well yeah no shit.. India has a billion people.

You claim less testing is the reason? That's a simple fix..look at positivity rate. Should be sky high if all the testing is coming from FL hospitals as you claim and also eliminates variations in testing numbers.

Guess what STILL less than California. Guess what positivity rate at the BOTTOM of all states.

Here's actual references instead of just whatever feels good to say.

Could the natural immune system not be an Alex Jones conspiracy after all???!!!!!

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/covid-19-testing

https://www.prb.org/resources/which-us-states-are-the-oldest...

View on HN

> So while you're right...by not using per Capita numbers... you're presenting your data in a very disengenuous and truth distorting way.

GP actually did speak in terms of per capita numbers (hence "population share"). In absolute numbers, California would exceed Florida in old people; as shares of the population, California has (according to your second link) 14.3% of their population over age 65, while Florida has 20.5%. This works out to be Florida having about 43% more old people per capita than California. If the claim upthread that deaths per capita in Florida more than doubled that in California is accurate, then 43% more people 65 or older per capita does not explain more than 100% more deaths per capita.

> Guess what STILL less than California. Guess what positivity rate at the BOTTOM of all states.

As to your positivity rate point, I can't confidently speak to whether your argument would be valid if the data was as you said, but your data is not accurate: your link lists Florida at the bottom of all states, but it also lists them as having a 0.0% positivity rate. The latter is, unsurprisingly, not correct, and neither is the former. Going through to its listed data source [1], I calculated positivity rates (number of positive results / number of total results) for each state using the data as of October 11 [2] (filtering for "date" equal to October 11 of this year).

Using cumulative numbers ("total_results_reported"), Florida has a positivity rate of 10.4% (18th highest), California has 5.7% (44th highest). Using new results with a date of October 11 ("new_results_reported"), Florida is doing better than earlier: only 4.6% positive (42th highest). Still twice California's 2.1% (53rd, below every other state and every US territory, but ahead of the District of Columbia).

1: https://healthdata.gov/dataset/COVID-19-Diagnostic-Laborator...

2: arbitrarily picked to be far enough back I could be sure I would not be missing data for some states due to reporting lag on the first try.

>> then 43% more people 65 or older per capita does not explain more than 100% more deaths per capita

Why doesn't it? Is there some evidence that it does or doesn't.... or is this more of a claim?

Is there direct evidence that it's masks and not the density and quantity of old people?

Old people makes way more sense to me than our current mask policy of wearing a dirty cloth on your face until you sit down at the restaurant.

Thank you for looking into that, in a hurry I just looked at the ranking.

>>Florida is doing better than earlier: only 4.6% positive (42th highest). Still twice California's 2.1% Still shockingly close, considering they have no Covid restrictions, whatsoever. And Cali has been extremely strict.

I guess it's subjective levels or risk. Is two percent lower infection rate worth it to require everyone to wear masks?

>Why doesn't it? Is there some evidence that it does or doesn't.... or is this more of a claim?

For the difference to be explained solely by there being more old people because old people are more vulnerable to COVID, I would interpret that to mean that any particular individual is not more or less likely to die depending on whether they live in California or Florida and the overall difference is determined by the difference in age distribution. But, as a limiting case, if all COVID deaths were among elderly people, then a 100%+ higher overall death rate in Florida which has only a 43% larger share of its population who are elderly compared to California would require that deaths per capita among the elderly population would have to be ~40% higher in Florida than in California (2 / 1.43). It's possible that my intuition is making an error here, but I think that the situation with only elderly people dying is the upper bound on how much effect the age distribution can directly have. So, something further is necessary to explain the additional (at least) 40%.

> Is there direct evidence that it's masks and not the density and quantity of old people?

I don't know whether masks explain the cited difference (I haven't seen convincing evidence but I also haven't really examined the matter), just that age distribution cannot explain the entirety of the difference. At least some age groups must have been more likely to die due to COVID-19 if they lived in Florida than in California during the cited period. It's certainly possible that some portion of that additional difference can be explained through downstream effects of the age distribution, but demonstrating that would require some additional evidence beyond the bare fact of the age distribution differences.

My understanding is there were also other policy differences between the two states besides mask requirements, but I do not have any specific reason to believe them to have had a significant (or any) effect, just like I don't have any specific reason to believe that downstream consequences of the age distribution to have had a significant (or any) effect.

> I guess it's subjective levels or risk. Is two percent lower infection rate worth it to require everyone to wear masks?

I couldn't say, although it's also worth remembering that the positivity rate data in question doesn't tell you anything about the infection rate. It doesn't even tell you what proportion of people who got tested received positive results, since the data in question is about samples rather than patients.

> Florida has the second highest per Capita number of old people in the country

This isn’t a great excuse for Florida’s death rate. Maine has the highest per capita elderly population in the US and the 3rd lowest COVID death rate. Sure it’s got a lower population density, however: 25% of elderly (65+) Americans live in Florida, Texas and California. California had 1/2 the death rate of Florida and 3/4 that of Texas. All warm climates, all high population density. The only difference was California’s restrictions and higher vaccination rate.

It’s hard to see how Florida’s policy was more effective, particularly with regard to protecting its elderly.

>>The only difference was California’s restrictions and higher vaccination rate

False.

We literally just went over this...

Florida is the second oldest state in the country and the oldest with a high population density which means it's old people stacked on old people.

California is the fifth youngest state in the country, so there's a level of herd immunity already existing there as young people under 55 are virtually untouched by Covid.(more people died of car accidents in 2019 than under 55 age group in the entire pandemic)

Its been clear from the start that this disease is bimodal and kills old people at a shockingly high rate and the under 55 at a shockingly low rate.

Old people are the difference... not vaccinations (which don't work that well,see Colin Powell/ Ireland/this paper) or restrictions.

But it's better to avoid this fact because it calls your narrative under question and makes it less certain why you injected experimental substances in your body in the first place.

All of this was to save Granny remember?

>False

To quote the article you shared above:

"About 52 million Americans are age 65 or older, according to the Census Bureau’s 2018 population estimates. One quarter of these older Americans live in one of three states: California, Florida, and Texas."

There are large elderly populations in all three states. Florida may have more elderly per capita than California, but not 2X more. However they did have twice the death rate. Elderly population alone does not explain the poor performance of Florida's COVID policy.

>California is the fifth youngest state in the country, so there's a level of herd immunity already existing there as young people under 55 are virtually untouched by Covid.

Again, this point doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Texas is the 3rd youngest state in the US, with a median age of 35 (California is 5th, with a median age of 37). California had <3/4 the death rate of Texas.

>more people died of car accidents in 2019 than under 55 age group in the entire pandemic

I don't know what point you are making here. Accidents are the 3rd leading cause of death for Americans after heart disease and cancer. Certainly not an insignificant amount, and all 50 state governments go to great lengths to reduce them.

> Colin Powell

It is widely known that Gen. Powell had multiple myeloma, which hobbles the immune system and makes all vaccines less effective. Why omit this? It is almost as though you are trying to cherry pick anecdotal evidence to support a deeply-held, quasi-religious belief that people are overreacting about COVID.

>All of this was to save Granny remember?

If that's true then Florida has clearly failed. Common sense dictates that the state which takes more precautions against COVID will have fewer cases and deaths. If you believe that the inconvenience of the restrictions is not worth the lives saved just say that. You've not made the case that they are ineffective.

>> Florida may have more elderly per capita than California, but not 2X more. However they did have twice the death rate.

Maybe herd immunity is exponential? Oh wait it is!!!!

You're eliminating many possibilities with nothing to support it.

>> Accidents are the 3rd leading cause of death

I said car accidents.

Talking with you is disengenuous and continually truth distorting, so my choice is to spend more time correcting your factual inaccuracies in that wall of text or play with the dog.

You win this debate by pure stubborn stupidity.

> Maybe herd immunity is exponential? Oh wait it is!!!!

Ok, so why does Texas have a higher death rate than California? They have a younger average population, lots of elderly people and basically zero covid restrictions since day 1. Shouldn’t they have exponentially more herd immunity?

>I said car accidents

As I understand your point, You claim COVID death rates among young people are comparable to car accident deaths, therefore we shouldn’t bother trying to reduce them. This makes no sense. Governments go to great lengths and enact regulations to reduce deaths from auto accidents, as well as far less frequent causes of death (eg plane crashes). Few people would say it’s not worth preventing these deaths.

>You win this debate by pure stubborn stupidity

I’ve reviewed your claims and provided facts in good faith that challenge your positions. You’ve responded with name calling. It seems like you simply believe what you believe and aren’t interested in any facts that don’t support your position. That is the definition of bad faith.

>>provided facts in good faith that challenge your positions

False. You have provided CLAIMS. Claims without a single supporting reference, and claimed those to be facts.

Even your claim about providing facts is false! lol

Claims that have been proven to be false or distorted numerous times.

You seem to be thriving in the post-truth era.

It's not worth it to engage with someone who distorts the truth so readily.

But best of luck to you anyhow!

The data on elderly populations is taken from an article that you originally shared [1]. Perhaps you did not read it, or do not believe your own data, but it clearly states that Florida, Texas and California have the largest elderly populations in the US. It also clearly states that the median age in Texas and % of the population over 65 are lower than in California.

The data on covid death rates (per 100,000 people) is publicly available [2]. Even in a state with a younger population (Texas), overall death rates are still higher than in California.

I don't need to distort the truth because it is obvious to anyone with common sense.

But let's look at it another way just for fun. 40,689 Floridians over age 65 have died of COVID [3]. If Florida had the same % of over 65 residents as California does (14.3%), we would expect to see 28,245 >age 65 deaths in Florida. This would give Florida an overall COVID death rate of 201 deaths per 100,000 people. This is still higher than the actual overall death rate in California (179 deaths per 100,00 people). And in this hypothetical exercise, we are likely still undercounting deaths in Florida.

My point is that you can't only cite age as a confounder when you compare Florida and California. You have to take into account different policies, and there is no way to argue that Florida's policy has saved lives.

[1] https://www.prb.org/resources/which-us-states-are-the-oldest... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi... [3] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Se...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com